The sky, spread like a black sheet across the world. With the contrast of the soft dancing starlight and the moon that shines like a crystal ball. The night, so quiet and calm that only the crickets and the mild waves could be heard.
Darwin pulled his grabbed Stephen's hand on his face and looked straight at him. His hazel eyes, illuminated by the smooth touch of the moonlight shone like summer field showered by a morning sun.
"How dramatic...", Hubert popped behind them and teased them with a closed eyed pout. Stephen playfully smacked his forehead with the back of his hand and they both laughed.
"You look wonderful when you're like that", Stephen commended Darwin as he looked up to the sky.
"Sooner or later I'll go back to looking savage and malevolent. I was reborn into something that sent this temporary humanity off. So consider this a short sneak peak of what I am before I died", Darwin replied calmly with a hint of smile. His small fangs showing as he gave a smirk at Stephen.
"Do you remember how we met? That was horrible", Hubert demoted behind them.
"How could I ever forget that?", Darwin turned to Hubert and gave him a s bobbed face.
"Common grounds please", Stephen intervened.
Hubert stood and clapped his hands. He returned to his normal state and he sat down with his legs crossed. He pinched Darwin's cheek and smacked his forehead and run away.Laughing for what he did, he chased Hubert behind him but he leaped and took a flight. He stuck his tongue out to him.
"Try me", He squinted his eyes at Hubert as he arched his back to pull his wings but nothing came.
Stephen looked at him in confusion and turned to face him.
"What happened?", He asked as he pulled himself up and dusted his shirt off.
"I can't...I can't pull my wings off", Darwin looked at his hands then to Stephen.
Hubert tilted his head above them. He felt that Darwin stopped chasing him. He flickered to them and looked at Darwin.
"Your body is responding on the withdrawal of your memories", Hubert sighed at the sight of frustrated Darwin.
"What should I do?", He fell down on his feet and gave them a weak face and sigh.
"There must be some kind of way to revert your memories back and relive being a vampire", Stephen sat down beside him and dusted Darwin's hair off.
Hubert joined them as he crossed his legs in the mushy ground. He tapped his chin as he thought of an idea how he could help his big brother gather his vampirism back.
"I can't stay like. I didn't go a long way to end up like this. I felt the pain of having my bitter past heightened by my senses when I became a vampire. And that I got used to. But feeling like a human and falling back into the deepest pits of my horrible past after concealing it for centuries is an inescapable abyss. I can't escape humanity", Darwin started weeping as he looked at the ground.
"His senses are getting twisted. He felt like he's been renewed for a human's delicate sense and he can't stand even a simple disappointed", Hubert commented as he looked at Stephen with a concerned face.
"You gotta be ok, vampire kid. We gonna find a way to bring you back", Stephen brushed his hands through his back and pulled him to his side.
Hubert stood up and spread his hands. A dome of galaxies started spinning around them. Stephen looked around with awe as stars and other celestial bodies run around them.
"Hey look dada, don't you always wanted to swim in the river of stars?", Hubert teased him as he looked down at him with a wide eyes smile.
"I hate you", He looked up at Hubert and then to the spinning galactic space around them.
The night gets deeper as they let time passed them. Talking and laughing like a normal human beings under the beam of the bright moon staring from above.
Hubert summoned Dalmao and flew them back to Stephen's house. Darwin felt a drip of drowsiness ad he stepped into the house.
"This is the first time I felt this sleepy", He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and fell into the soft couch.
"Perks of being a human", Hubert and Steph said in unison.
"Ughhh stop teasing me", He let out a soft yawn as he kept rubbing his eyes.
"You should take a rest kid", Stephen looked down at him with a glass of water in his hands. He handled one to Hubert.
"Ok one last thing. Maybe we should tell a little story to Dada Tel before we go to sleep", Hubby suggested as he sit on top of Darwin like a kitten.
"Get off...", Darwin murmured as he shrugged to his right to fight of the doze of sleepiness he felt.
Hubert clapped his hand and the room warped again. The wall disappeared and they augmented into an icy land with snow falling softly. Hubert started his narrative.
"This is the story of two outcasts. Crossed path with each other in the crisis of life. In the midst of the winter that never seemed to end. Fate, magic and destiny paved the way for a truce between two unusual creatures striving for life.
Hubert Strikerealm:
My spell, washed off by the anomalies of nature as I tried to defy it. Attempted to raise a scorching sun in the middle of a blizzard. How foolish can I get? I haven't learned a lesson since then. Still I am the same abomination of my own dear clan because I promoted defiance and death instead of life and harmony.
My name is Hubert Gibson Riverlight Strikerealm, the son of Larcus Macchia Strikerealm and Ellysaia Riverlight. Supposed to be the prince of the Golden Dawn Realm and the successor of the Light Grail. But I sucked at life and I was thrown out by my own race.
How I wish I got to live my life with all the titles and nobility. But I didn't because I couldn't.
Born as a pure blooded caster, I was expected to deliver a true arcane of balance in nature. Well, casters are the embodiment of life, peace and harmony. But except me.
Though I was with the blood of a noble family, I didn't have the chance to live a luxurious and glorious existence.
On the night of my 16th birthday, I was suppose to show the whole town about my "life-promoting" abolities. As a caster born of the noble, I carry the reputation of potential leader and a prince because people believed that I was blessed to have an eternal amount of life source magic. But it turned out to be the other way around.
In the ceremony of my grand descend, the priests of the High Sunrise of Fletcher asked me to turn the color of a Matthiola Incana into white. But when I exhibit my powers it turned into black and it wilted out. Panic with a hint of gasps and sighs of disappointment covered the entire hall as I looked back at my parents standing firmly and shocked at the balcony of the Fletcher Hall. I tried my best to do it for the second time but the same thing happened, only th death grip scattered all around the floor, almost reaching one of the priest.
I heard the people whisper from the back of the hall. Their whispers turned to talking and then talking turned to screams.
"Shun thee who possesses dark magic!", Their cheers turned into a commotion and stones started flying towards me.
I looked up to see a golden astral shield hovered on top of me. My father gestured me to run away with him but the priests made their moves.
"The devil has no place in the realm!", Five priestesses scattered around me with their staffs. Their casting abilities are not beyond any control so I was confident that I can counter then.
"I don't know what happened but if you let me out. We could stop these things from happening", I begged for my freedom but they lift their staffs and a burning white light showered upon me.
I screamed at the touch of what seemed like a molten metal burning right through my skin. I casted an immunity spell but the high priests nullify it with white magic.
"Even if you are with the blood of a Strikerealm, you are no exception with the punishment of possessing and practicing the dark arts. In the name of the divine clave, I declare you an abomination and am outcast of the caster race!", He throw his hands on top of his head and the air carried me high up the ground.
The clouds started forming like a tornado. The other side beamed like raging volcano as thunder started to roar loudly. In a blink of an eye, an episode of ravaging lightning bolt struck me. I screamed so loud that it almost shook the land as an overwhelming death blow of lightning burned every nerves in my body. I fell down like burning straight into the ground, with only an inch of life remained running in my system.
"Death would be so kind", One of the priests looked down upon me with disgust.
I looked up in between his feet and saw a familiar figure moving closer. My father in the grips of the Fletcher Knights looked at me with a teary eye.
"My child, I'm sorry if I can't do anything about it", He said as he looked down at me and trying to get away at the same time.
I don't what hurts the most. Is it looking at my father in the hands of the treacherous Fletcher High Priests or is the fact that he can't even lend a help even if I was his own child and blood. I closed my eyes at the shot of pain in my heart. Everything happened so fast that I didn't catch up.
But a shot of hope to survive a near execution situation suddenly hit me to the core. The nature of my magic is dark, and it goes against the norm of the Golden Ream. I just have to kill them all at once.
Kill them all at once
Kill them all at once
Kill them all at once...
Words that keep on running in my mind.
I heard a splash of blood splattered on the ground. I grabbed my chest and felt a sharp metal pierced right into my heart. At that moment I should have been dead but I shut my eyes and fell deep into the darkest pits of my mind. I embraced the darkness that is waiting for me in the corner. Geared up my nerves and senses with savagery and malevolence as I consumed the darkness of my heart and the nature of my existence.
I opened my eyes and cracked as smile as the world suddenly beat into a monochromatic scene. The world suddenly stopped moving as I pulled myself up. My eyes pitch black, like the colors of the night.
I spread my arms and black magic circle appeared at the sky.
"Your actions had pushed me to my limits", I whispered in the air.
"Death Harvest!", the life force from all over the land was sucked up by the magic circle. Living no trace in the whole area as it siphoned all things that has life in it. That includes my family.
I dropped the spell and realized that I was standing in a drought. The trees around stood up with no leaves and the land seemed drained of any evidences of water. I looked up and screamed in frustration and pain at the crime that I committed. I killed the entire Fletcher and worst my own family.
So I ran and ran away as far as I can and as much as I could. Summer turned to Fall then Winter under my feet. I was stuck in between regrets and gratitude and it almost drove me insane. My mind is contradicting with my feelings and back.
The caster clan told the legend of the black caster who killed and entire nation all over the land and until then, they truly considered me as an abomination and a disgrace of all the casters.
It was the winter of '69 that I happened to stumble upon the misty woods of Arista. Still on my solitude for being the outcast of my own kind. In the midst of the blizzard, the harsh frostbite brought by the unending downpour of ice crept like an infection in my skin. But it didn't bother me.
What bothered me is the face of a guy that I met on my way going nowhere with my life.
His eyes, grey as the moonlight. His hair, silver like the rivers in the snowy mountain and his lips so red that it almost look like it was dipped in blood and his skin, velvet and white as the snow. He looked at me like I'm some kind of a meal. But I got him first.
"Look, boy. If you know how to use your feet to run then now is the time to do it. If you're gonna pounce at me like a lion then let me tell you. You are delivering yourself to death", I threatened straight into his face.
"How cute. Talking to the waver of death and death himself?", He replied with a half smile that is full of sinister and malevolence. It almost sent shivers to my spine.
"Death? Death is actually my specialty", My eyes turned pitch black as I replied. Then I returned the same sinister smile that he gave.